r. Newman shuddered at himself! And no wonder that
William Law chose strangling and the pond rather than that any other man
should see what went on in his heart!

5. And as if all that were not enough, and more than enough, to commend
Mr. Prywell to us--to our trust, to our confidence, and to our
imitation--his royal certificate continues, 'One that looks into the very
bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid
arguments.' The very bottom of matters--that is, the very bottom of his
own and other men's hearts. Mr. Prywell counts nothing else worth a wise
man's looking at. Let fools and children look at the painted and
deceitful surface of things, but let men, men of matters, and especially
men of divine matters, look only at their own and other men's hearts. The
very bottom of all matters is there. All wars, all policies, all
debates, all disputes, all good and all evil counsels, all the much weal
and all the multitudinous woe of Mansoul--all have their bottom in the
heart; in the heart of God, or in the heart of man, or in the heart of
the devil. The heart is the root of absolutely every matter to Mr.
Prywell. He would not waste one hour of any day, or one watch of any
night, on anything else. And it was this that made him both the
extraordinarily successful scout he was, and the extraordinarily sober
and thoughtful and judicious man he was. O yes, my brethren, the bottom
of matters, when you take to it, will work the same change in you. 'Two
things,' says one who had long looked at his own matters with Mr.
Prywell's eyes--'two things, O Lord, I recognise in myself: nature, which
Thou hast made, and sin, which I have added.' My brethren, that
recognition, that discovery in yourselves, when it comes to you, will
sober you as it has sobered so many men before you: when it comes to you,
that is, about yourselves. That discovery made in yourselves will make
you deep-thinking men. It will make common men and unlearned men among
you to be philosophers and theologians and saints. It will work in you a
thoughtfulness, a seriousness, a depth, an awe, a holy fear, and a great
desire that will already have made you new creatures. When, in examining
yourselves and in characterising yourselves, you come on what some clear-
eyed men have come on in themselves, and what one of them has described
as 'the diabolical animus of the human mind'--when you make that
discovery in yourselves, that will sobe